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Expectation and Reality


exile

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I was hopeful but didn't have much in the way of expectations, mainly because I didn't think our performances over the past couple of years have given much encouragement. I was intrigued by the new generation/cautious optimism narrative and wanted to buy into it, but I remember 1978 so didn't. Of course I was buzzing for it at each kick-off but being Scottish has a way of ending up with a kick in the stomach and so it proved.

 

Yes, some good young players coming through (just as they have done before - for Gilmour and Patterson read Fletcher and McFadden) but we haven't started the WC qualifying brilliantly and will have to get back to our old ways of beating teams that are better than us - Denmark on this occasion - if we are to get to Qatar. And guess what, I'm hopeful, I'll believe anything is possible when the whistle blows, especially if I can actually get into the games, but my expectations won't be much.

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1 hour ago, exile said:

But even so, Gilmour only became a red hot expectation after the England game.

Everyone I spoke to wanted Gilmour to start v the Czechs. When McGregor came on instead of him I knew the game was up. Clarke made a total arse of this tournament and failed to learn anything from the Israel games (this being the most damning point). 

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Lets take a step back and think about how we actually qualified.   We won the Nations league Group C, the league containing the third best - out of four - ranked nations, nations that in normal circumstances would not be expected to qualify and without the lifeline that gave us, we wouldn't have been there.   Even then we got through on the tightest of all margins by winning two penalty shoot outs.  Scraping in doesn't even come close.   We've finished up as having the second worst record in the group stages, the only team worse than us was North Macedonia, who qualified by winning the Group D of the Nations League, so on that basis we finished exactly where we would have done had the tournament been seeded - we were the second worst team going in and came out as the second worst team.

Did Clarke make mistakes during the tournament, with the benefit of hindsight, yes.  Arguably he should've made a more adventurous selection in the game against the Czech Republic although we made more than enough chances in that game to win it, even taking into account the two poor goals we conceded.

Did some players underperform, I would say no, I struggle to think of anyone.  There may be some who fundamentally aren't good enough to play at the very top level of international football but that is different from not giving your absolute best.   Players at the very top level are capable of performing in *every* game and not just "raising their game" in one individual match.   On the plus side some players showed that they are more than comfortable playing at this level and some proved me wrong in my opinion of them, sorry Grant Hanley, I thought you were an old clogger and I got that wrong.

We have had some key positions/areas where we have been weak for probably the best part of a decade.  Centre Halves, Right Back, Forwards and that showed in the finals.

Not all doom and gloom though.  I think Clarke will be a better manager for this experience and I think that by accident or design he's come across the basics of a good system and line up that should only get better over the next few years as they become more familiar with each other and they have age on their side.

He's cracked what managers have struggled to do since they came to prominence and found a system that enables two of his best players - Tierney and Robertson - to play to their potential.   The back three of McTominey, Hanley and Tierney looks like it has potential.   Probably time to start to bringing through some of the better younger players.  He needs to find a midfield set up which can enable Gilmour to play as a deep lying midfielder - not a holding role - who can take the ball off the back three, start attacks, recycle the ball and maintain possession and also Turnbull playing in a more advanced and attacking role.   That should be the basis of our midfield for the next decade.

In the medium term we need to find a goalkeeper to replace Marshall and Gordon and given there doesn't really seem to be anyone coming through that looks anywhere close to being good enough that might have to be through the eligible route. 

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42 minutes ago, gaz7 said:

I'm meaning going forward in future

Apologies I see that now. Read it when I was half asleep 😖

 

As aaid alluded to all 4 of the Nations League qualifiers fell at the first, so that part of it has gone as expected. 

The stark reality is that our lack of guile in the final third has cost us. Over 40 goal attempts and only 1 converted = just not good enough.

I won't be too critical of the manager but I hope he's learned from this experience that at an elite level you've got to be prepared to change your gameplan suddenly.

 

 

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1 hour ago, aaid said:

 We've finished up as having the second worst record in the group stages, the only team worse than us was North Macedonia

I think you talk a lot of sense in your post generally, but didn't Turkey lose all three of their games and so (Whoop Whoop!) we were only third worst?

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3 hours ago, TDYER63 said:

Sums it up exactly for me. First game was a killer. We had to get something from that. Drawing with England gave us a temporary stay of execution , although we did more than enough to earn it.
When your back is to the wall, stronger teams with greater experience will normally pull it out of the bag. Croatia did exactly that, and despite them having the the hassle of flying in and out the UK for every game. 
We just dont have the resilience to take us that extra step at the moment but have definitely improved since 2019. 

Another poster has already mentioned this, but playing the supposedly easiest game first possibly wasn't helpful to us either. We were expected to win that and when we did that the pressure was on immediately.  The team deserves credit for picking itself up and going into the hardest game (on paper anyway), playing well and coming back with a point.

I think we need to lighten up on ourselves a wee bit.  It was our first tournament in literally decades and we were in a group with the 2018 World Cup finalists, 2018 World Cup semi-finalists (who we were to play in their own ground) and a team who regularly qualify for tournaments (I believe the Czechs have qualified for every European Championship finalssince 1996). It was no easy group.

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I do think we were a bit unfortunate. Losing Ross Jack prior to the tournament was a shame. I also think Ryan Christie's marked loss of form (whatever the cause!) over the last year was a problem given how instrumental he had been. The Tierney and Gilmour issues have been mentioned previously - to lose two top players at key stages ie the first and last games must have been disrupting. I wonder too what impact a fit Griffiths might have had, given our obvious failings in the penalty box. 

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3 hours ago, DAVIDB46 said:

You have maxwells saying this team can qualify for the next SIX tournaments .

in a few months it’s back to World Cup qualifying where a rampant danish side may put us to the sword and that will quickly knock that theory on the head .

We're going to need a Wembley style performance to get anything from Denmark, I reckon.

We're in a decent position in the group at the moment but we've three huge games coming up - Denmark away, Moldova at home and Austria away.  It's annoying that we blew a great chance of securing a play-off spot via the Nations League after we looked poised to win our group.

2 hours ago, vanderark14 said:

I've missed Mox and his drama

Hungary gave a top team a game and drew, we gave England a game and drew......., actually we we were better than England. Hungary finished bottom, we finished bottom

 

 

Aye, Hungary failed a bit better than we did, that's the only difference.

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We surely now have learned the lesson that all the hype and hoopla around a tournament is just noise. We need a strategic approach to securing long term success in qualification for major tournaments.

That means realising every game is important to build your world rankings. To be given decent opportunities in qualifying we need a good seeding. That means for the Euro’s on average we need a World FIFA Ranking within the top 40 and for World Cups one of at least 25.

As someone has already mentioned, it e got so excited by winning the place in the Euro’s in Serbia we took our eye off the ball and lost the play off ticket to the World Cup. 
 

We can’t afford those mistakes. Even if this World Cup group doesn’t work out we need to ensure we gain as many points as possible even if qualification seems unlikely. Then put as much effort into the next Euro Nations League to build long term opportunity.

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51 minutes ago, KirkieRobRoy said:

I think you talk a lot of sense in your post generally, but didn't Turkey lose all three of their games and so (Whoop Whoop!) we were only third worst?

In which case we overachieved. I think the general point still stands though.

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Of all the squads in the tournament we have: 

  • Joint least major tournament experience for both players and manager with zero experience 
  • We have the least international goals scored in the squad as a collective 
  • We have the least international caps in the squad as a collective
  • We are the third lowest ranked team in the tournament based on FIFA rankings

True qualification for this tournament included

  • Loss to Kazakhstan 3-0 
  • Two 4-0 losses 
  • And a 3-0 loss 
  • In those 4 games against Belgium (granted were very good team) Russia an OK team & Kazakhs (not a good team) we lost a collective of 14-0 

We got through the back door which is fair enough however where we are now compared to where we were only 2 years ago is night and day - we have qualified and played at a major tournament for the first time in 23 years, we have more of an identify then we have had for a while, we have a good mix of youth and experience 

Expectations for this tournament needs to be partly based on reality as well as some hope 

We aren't that great we have some decent players but no world class players - lets be grateful that we are on the right road maybe its not a steep level or speed of improvement that we'd want but we are heading in the right direction 

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24 minutes ago, darkbluegas said:

We surely now have learned the lesson that all the hype and hoopla around a tournament is just noise. We need a strategic approach to securing long term success in qualification for major tournaments.

That means realising every game is important to build your world rankings. To be given decent opportunities in qualifying we need a good seeding. That means for the Euro’s on average we need a World FIFA Ranking within the top 40 and for World Cups one of at least 25.

As someone has already mentioned, it e got so excited by winning the place in the Euro’s in Serbia we took our eye off the ball and lost the play off ticket to the World Cup. 
 

We can’t afford those mistakes. Even if this World Cup group doesn’t work out we need to ensure we gain as many points as possible even if qualification seems unlikely. Then put as much effort into the next Euro Nations League to build long term opportunity.

This 100%.

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50 minutes ago, scotlad said:

We're going to need a Wembley style performance to get anything from Denmark, I reckon.

We're in a decent position in the group at the moment but we've three huge games coming up - Denmark away, Moldova at home and Austria away.  It's annoying that we blew a great chance of securing a play-off spot via the Nations League after we looked poised to win our group.

Aye, Hungary failed a bit better than we did, that's the only difference.

It'll be interesting to reflect on us and them after the next round of WC points on what impact our performances at this tournament has had - they're currently second in England's group after drawing at home to Poland and wins against San Marino and Andora.   They've England at home, Albania away and Andora at home so a chance to carry on the momentum their positive performances has given them.   

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1 hour ago, scotlad said:

We're going to need a Wembley style performance to get anything from Denmark, I reckon.

We're in a decent position in the group at the moment but we've three huge games coming up - Denmark away, Moldova at home and Austria away.  It's annoying that we blew a great chance of securing a play-off spot via the Nations League after we looked poised to win our group.

Aye, Hungary failed a bit better than we did, that's the only difference.

I don't think we are in a decent position in the group. We are currently vying with Israel for third place, IMO.

If we can somehow get 6 or more points from the next 3 games then we will be in a decent position but I think we will struggle to get 5. Maybe not even 4?

Austria are a better team than us. Denmark are a far better team than us. We can't even beat Israel.

It wouldn't be a huge surprise if Austria take 9 points from their next 3 games and if they do that we are gone. There would be no coming back from that.

But you never know we could take 7 or 9 points from our next 3 games (I suppose stranger things have happened). But we have done nothing in the past couple of years that suggests to me that that is a remote possibility. 

My prediction is third place but we will need to beat Israel to do that, which is something Steve Clarke has failed to do in four attempts.

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3 hours ago, scotlad said:

 

I think we need to lighten up on ourselves a wee bit.  It was our first tournament in literally decades and we were in a group with the 2018 World Cup finalists, 2018 World Cup semi-finalists (who we were to play in their own ground) and a team who regularly qualify for tournaments (I believe the Czechs have qualified for every European Championship finalssince 1996). It was no easy group.

That’s a very fair point.  
 

Back in 2006-7 we were talking about how impossible a group we had in the WC finalists France and Italy and the QF team Ukraine. 
 

This time because it was England and Croatia rather than the big names we didn’t seem to apply the same expectation levels. The Czechs also look like turning out better than we possibly respected which shouldn’t be surprising really given we struggled past their Covid-11 second string away in the qualifier last year. 

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5 hours ago, aaid said:

He's cracked what managers have struggled to do since they came to prominence and found a system that enables two of his best players - Tierney and Robertson - to play to their potential.   The back three of McTominey, Hanley and Tierney looks like it has potential.

I don’t think our results back this up at all. We can’t score goals, our midfield is overstretched and the opposition have as much time as they like to pepper our box with crosses and shots. 

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1 hour ago, Orraloon said:

I don't think we are in a decent position in the group. We are currently vying with Israel for third place, IMO.

If we can somehow get 6 or more points from the next 3 games then we will be in a decent position but I think we will struggle to get 5. Maybe not even 4?

Austria are a better team than us. Denmark are a far better team than us. We can't even beat Israel.

It wouldn't be a huge surprise if Austria take 9 points from their next 3 games and if they do that we are gone. There would be no coming back from that.

But you never know we could take 7 or 9 points from our next 3 games (I suppose stranger things have happened). But we have done nothing in the past couple of years that suggests to me that that is a remote possibility. 

My prediction is third place but we will need to beat Israel to do that, which is something Steve Clarke has failed to do in four attempts.

We're currently in second place, that's all I was meaning.  I'm sure we'd all be delighted if the group finished that way but I agree, it'll be difficult.

Austria are a better side than us on paper (and it goes without saying that the Danes are) and if they click they should fancy their chances of turning us over.  I reckon we need at least 5 points from the next 3 games to stay on course for a play-off spot.

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41 minutes ago, AlfieMoon said:

That’s a very fair point.  
 

Back in 2006-7 we were talking about how impossible a group we had in the WC finalists France and Italy and the QF team Ukraine. 
 

This time because it was England and Croatia rather than the big names we didn’t seem to apply the same expectation levels. The Czechs also look like turning out better than we possibly respected which shouldn’t be surprising really given we struggled past their Covid-11 second string away in the qualifier last year. 

The way Croatia were almost being written off by some people was staggering.  They might be an aging team but they're a bloody good aging team, but because they're not a big name they were perceived as there for the taking, despite everything they've done lately.

And England, whether we like to admit it or not, are a good side, especially at home.  We complain, with some justification, that they don't afford us enough respect, but maybe we're guilty of doing the same in return.

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20 minutes ago, er yir macaroon said:

I don’t think our results back this up at all. We can’t score goals, our midfield is overstretched and the opposition have as much time as they like to pepper our box with crosses and shots. 

How often were we exposed on the left hand side and how many good deliveries came in from our left hand side?

We are strong on the left hand side and weak on the right.  That was why Croatia targeted that side.  That's not a criticism of either O'Donnell or McTominey, more the reality that Tierney and Robertson are probably two of the better left sided defenders in Europe at the moment.

 

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